Why Aren’t We More Unified?

For the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I’ve seen a lot of posts out there bemoaning the fact that our country came together to support each other 20 years ago, but we’re unable to do that today with the pandemic. The tacit assumption for all of that is that we’ve changed as a society, and that who we are now is fundamentally different than who we were then.

I’m not so sure that’s the case.

From what I’ve seen, people generally stay the same. They’re motivated by the same basic needs and fears. They’re looking for acceptance or validation or wealth or prestige. They want to provide for themselves or their family. They want to be safe and free. None of that has changed. On a local level, I still see people being people. Some of them are nicer than others. Some of them are meaner. But it’s not like that’s anything new.

And it’s important to remember a couple of things. First, when 9/11 happened, there was a very real, very tangible threat. Americans were unequivocally attacked, and so it was easy to band together against a common enemy. With the pandemic, that immediate threat didn’t really appear. The science behind what was going on was unclear at first which left things open for people to debate just how much of a threat really existed.

Anytime you’ve got room for debate, that debate will happen, if you involve enough people and give it enough time. And we’ve got plenty of people, and we’ve had plenty of time.

Second, the technology has changed drastically in the intervening 20 years. In 2001, there was no huge public forum for people to discuss issues and share ideas. As a reminder, here’s what CNN looked like that day. Here’s Fox News. See anything missing? Comments sections. Facebook was three years away. YouTube wouldn’t come until 2005. Even MySpace wasn’t around yet. There just wasn’t a place for people to argue.

That also means there was no way for news to spread quickly. There was also no platform for disinformation to run rampant. You had talk radio, and you had opinionated news sources, but if someone wanted to make up a news story, there was no way for them to do that and put it out in a way that the masses could be fooled into thinking it was real. Today, a lot of the really breaking news often appears on Twitter before it appears anywhere else. And making stuff up on Twitter takes pretty much no expertise at all.

It’s also important to remember that “unified” didn’t really count for everyone. There was mass discrimination against people from the Middle East (or people who looked like they were.) So sure, it might have felt great for many Americans, but it certainly didn’t feel great for many minorities. But again, that’s not the sort of thing that would easily appear on anyone’s radar. Not unless the news was actively reporting it.

And the unity wasn’t something that lasted incredibly long, either. Sure, President Bush’s popularity had a massive spike after the attacks, but within a year and a half, it was back down to about where it had been, and it only got worse from there.

Unified? Less than a year before 9/11, you had the contentious election of 2000, filled with debate over hanging chads and recounts. Opinions were very strong on both sides of that. It would have been much, much more heated if Gore had continued to press the issue and not conceded.

I think the biggest difference between then and now is that it’s easier to find out not everyone agrees with you. There are more platforms for people to speak up, many of them anonymously. And the challenge we’re facing is fundamentally different than the one we faced back in 2001. (And even back then, once we got past the attacks themselves, there came the big debate about who was responsible for it.

This might all seem discouraging, but I choose to look at it differently. I really believe the majority of Americans want the same basic things. The possibility of unity is still there, but in many ways we’re at the whims of our leaders. As long as our leaders refuse to compromise and lead by example, there will be no real chance of unity. Then again, we’re also in a unique situation where the people who believe the pandemic is a real threat also believe masking and vaccination are the way to defeat that threat. And the people who don’t want to mask or vaccinate generally don’t believe the pandemic is a real threat.

(Though again, I’d say a big part of that falls at the feet of key leaders and news organizations, willing to put their political and financial futures ahead of the health and safety of our country. At this point, the majority of people who are getting sick and dying of COVID are the unvaccinated. And the majority of those are Republican, according to polls. I really wonder if one side effect of this pandemic will be an even faster swing away from conservatism, for the simple reason that more conservatives end up dying than liberals. (Though, of course, there are also anti-vaxxers among liberals. They just don’t make up as big a slice of the pie.))

How often has perceived unity really just been a selective portrayal of what’s happening at any one moment? History often portrays complex issues as having had a consensus around their solution, but history typically favors the victor anyway . . .

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

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When Your Prius Won’t Start

I’ve had my Prius for about 4 years now, and I’ve been very happy with it for the most part. The gas mileage is great, and with winter tires (a must around here for it), it handles snowy roads without too much complaint. Sure, it gets some jabs at it from time to time. I know what the word on the street about Prius owners is, but for the most part, I just don’t care. The car has given me no trouble to speak of.

Until recently.

A week and a half ago, when I went to start my Prius, it turned on the electrical system in the car, but didn’t actually start the car. The engine didn’t even turn over. Confused, I pressed the power button again, and the engine came to life. I dismissed it as a random strange thing, but the next time I tried to start the car, it did it again. This time, simply pressing the power button again did nothing. The electrical would come on, but the dashboard was nothing but warning lights.

Typically in a situation like this, my experience with cars says that if the electrical isn’t having any issues, then it can’t be the battery. And everything in car seemed fine as far as the electrical system went. Not knowing what else to do, I sat there turning it on and off again, hoping it would somehow roar back to life.

It did after about five minutes of this.

From then on, the car became more and more temperamental. I took it to my mechanic, who seemed to be at sea when it came to working on anything electrical with a Prius. He tested the battery and looked for warning messages, but the battery seemed fine, and the car wasn’t reporting anything was wrong. He had no idea what I should do. However, it was getting worse, and I had visions of me being stranded who-knows-where, with no idea how to get the car someplace it be fixed.

I googled the problem extensively, and I got conflicting answers. Certainly nothing conclusive. So I buckled down and made an appointment at the nearest Toyota dealership, 45 minutes away. I took the car in on Monday, and the verdict was the battery had gone bad. (Not the hybrid battery. The regular battery.)

It turns out, Priuses start up differently than most cars. In a regular car, you turn it on and it cranks the engine and you’re off and running. In a Prius, pressing the power button turns on the electrical system, which runs through a couple quick system checks and then sends a message to the battery to turn the car on. My battery had enough juice to run the electrical system, but not enough to get the car itself going. And Prius batteries are special snowflakes. They’re different than your typical car battery, for battery reasons I don’t care enough to figure out. They’re supposed to last about 4-5 years. Mine was going on 7.

All I know is that it cost me $385 to have the battery replaced, and the people at the dealership weren’t 100% sure it would fix it. “Probably” and “Almost definitely” were used a couple of times. Enough to make me skittish about paying, but what else was I going to do? I paid the money, they gave me a new battery, and off I drove. The car started right away without a hiccup, and it’s been steady ever since.

If only all problems in life could be so easily fixed.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

To All the Paper Towels I’ve Used Before

It’s a well-known fact that not all paper towels are created equal. Some of them have all the absorbent qualities of cardboard, while others are like someone took a sponge and turned it into paper form through the miracle of modern science. The trick, of course, is finding that sweet spot where you’re not paying an arm and a leg for drying your hands, and you’re not just smearing water around while pretending you’re having some sort of an effect. There are bonus points for being environmentally friendly, as well.

And because This Is Important, I figured I’d devote a whole blog post to the topic. Ranking the drying methods out there, from worst to best. I’m going to use a couple of different factors to rate them each. First: ease of use. Second: affordability. Third: effectiveness. Fourth: environmental friendliness. Fifth: ick factor. You know you want to read it . . .

Public Restroom Drying Options

When heading to the bathroom in a public place, I almost always wash my hands. (The times I haven’t are more due to the fact that the sink is broken, or there is no soap, or the very thought of touching the sink convinces me it’ll be much worse in the long run, so I just go find some hand sanitizer instead.) However, there have been plenty of times I choose to just wipe my hands on my pants or air dry them instead. Here are some of the worst options:

• Blown Air Dryers: Ease of use (2). Affordability (4). Effectiveness (1-3). Environmental Friendliness (3). Ick Factor (5). There are different types of air dryers. It’s a plus that they just need a press of a button or wave of the hand to get them going, but the thought of using one now (after COVID) leaves much to be desired. There are enough germs in a bathroom already. We really don’t need to make them more airborne. Plus, some air dryers are better than others. At the bottom of the heap are the one’s that don’t really blow much in the way of air. It’s more like a gentle breeze, and you’ll be standing there for the next 10 years before your hands are dry. Then there are the ones that make you stick your hand inside them to activate them, going on the theory that those germs aren’t just going to spread themselves, so it’s more helpful if you put your hands into a spot that can collect the germs and deliver them more efficiently. Then you’ve got the industrial wind machines that try to take your skin off, since skin can’t be wet if it’s not on your body. But blown air dryers really suffer because they are so hyper focused. You can’t wipe a table off with one. You can’t blow your nose with one. (Granted, I haven’t tried to blow my nose with one, but . . . )
• Hand Towels: Ease of use (5). Affordability (1). Effectiveness (5). Environmental Friendliness (4). Ick Factor (5). I suppose some places think they’re being home-ier by providing real towels to dry hands. I would sooner use a rabid skunk, but maybe some people out there prefer these? When I see a towel in a public bathroom, I can’t help but think what horrors that towel has seen over the last days or weeks. True, there are those funky machines that have towels on some kind of a rolling loop mechanism, where you pull down to expose a new piece of towel, but I’ve always found them more than a little suspect. If I see anything cloth-related, I’ll just wave my hands dry, thank you very much. I don’t care if they’re effective or easy to use. No.
• Paper Towels: Ease of use (1-5). Affordability (4). Effectiveness (1-5). Environmental Friendliness (3). Ick Factor (1). The good thing about a paper towel is that you know where it’s been. If it’s nice and crisp, you don’t have to worry about the ick factor too much. The problem with them is you never know the experience you’re going to have when you get one. Some of them absorb about as well as a rock. Some of them get drenched after you’ve put about a teaspoon of water into them. Some people solve this problem by just taking about a bakers’ dozen of the paper towels before they start to try to dry their hands, but that really sinks the environmental friendliness score. On the other hand, you can indeed take some of these for using elsewhere, so yay for that. In an ideal world, a public restroom has paper towels that dry your hands with a single towel. That rarely happens.

Home Options

• Paper Towels: Ease of use (5). Affordability (2). Effectiveness (5). Environmental Friendliness (2). Ick Factor (1). If money were no object, and I didn’t care about the environment at all, then brand name paper towels would be where it was at. Bounty, baby. The quicker picker upper. My problem is that I hate throwing money away, and I hate just making extra unnecessary waste. Bounty does both of these. I generally compromise by getting the paper towels that are half as wide as the normal ones, and even then I end up tearing those in half to make sure I’m just using what I need. But I still have a hard time using one without thinking that I could have used a cloth napkin or a hand towel instead. That said, there are definitely things you just need a paper towel for. What sort of a monster kills a spider with cloth towel?
• Cloth Napkins: Ease of use (4). Affordability (2). Effectiveness (4). Environmental Friendliness (2). Ick Factor (3). They definitely get the job done. The big problem here is that they’re often too small, and they tend to get stained after a while, to the point that you debate whether or not they’re really clean, even after they’re straight out of the washing machine. I always feel kind of guilty giving guests cloth napkins unless they’re pristine. (The napkins, not the guests.) Also, these aren’t the cheapest route to go by any means.
• Hand Towels: Ease of use (5). Affordability (1). Effectiveness (5). Environmental Friendliness (2). Ick Factor (3). I mean, if I had money just coming out of my eyeballs, then I’d use hand towels for everything. Definitely absorbent. They’ll dry pretty much anything you need. But they just aren’t that good for single-use applications. Maybe I just need to get over my inner desire to make each hand towel last as long as humanly possible before I have to wash it . . .
• Actual Towels: Ease of use (2). Affordability (1). Effectiveness (5). Environmental Friendliness (1). Ick Factor (5). Proof that there can, indeed, be too much of a good thing. For one thing, buying actual towels is neither cheap nor easy to use for most tasks. You’ve just got too much terry. For another, when I go to the bathroom at a friend’s house and all that’s there is their actual towel, I start to get flashbacks to public bathrooms. Just sayin’.

So what’s the solution? What’s the one towel to rule them all? I’m afraid the search continues, for me. So far, the most universal towel option I’ve found happens to typically be “wipe your hands on your pants.” Unfortunately, this has a very low Wife Tolerance Rating, which often ends up being the most critical score of all.

How about you? Got any good towel tips, or horror stories of what to avoid? Please share.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

New Nominations for Rules of Civility

As part of my semesterly “tour of classes” routine, I visited a class today that was discussion George Washington’s Rules of Civility. This was a list of 110 different rules that Washington had copied out by hand (probably from a French translation of those rules) by the time he was sixteen years old. They’re generally guidelines to follow when you want to be polite in public, and they contain things like #10: “When you Sit down, Keep your Feet firm and Even, without putting one on the other or Crossing them” and #44: “When a man does all he can though it Succeeds not well blame not him that did it.”

As you might expect, a number of them seem far too proper and stuffy for today’s social scene. (Though a number of them definitely still apply.) I was wondering what such a list would consist of today, and thought we might crowdsource it a little. First, what are some nominees from the list that you feel should still be on it today? One that I saw would be #82: “Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise.” I mean, to me that’s just common sense. I always try to under promise and over deliver. I want to make sure people have expectations I can meet or exceed, rather than the other way around. When you lead people to believe you can do more than you’re capable of, it can sour a lot of relationships. And that’s silly, because you’re the one setting yourself up for failure in those conditions. True, someone might be taken in by someone who promises the moon, but sooner or later those promises come due . . .

So that’s my nominee for “rule that should remain.” My nominee for “rule that should be added” would be something that seems pretty obvious to me as well: “Don’t make death threats.”

Seriously, people. I don’t know who’s out there thinking it’s okay to threaten to injure or kill a stranger on the internet, but I do know that people on the left and the right both get these death threats all the time. Has the “anonymous death threat” somehow taken the place of “signal to show I’m really upset and want to make sure you know that”? Because if that’s the case, that needs to stop now.

A bit ago, a movie on Netflix made a big splash for a controversial poster. The film’s about an 11 year old who joins a dance team (or something), and despite it not being about anything really that controversial, Netflix had the “genius” idea to market it as a film about an 11 year old girl twerking competition, with a poster of sexually posed 11 year olds to match. It was a boneheaded marketing stunt, and it caused a large number of people to call for a boycott of Netflix and the movie.

It also, apparently, inspired people to send death threats to the director. Look, this post isn’t defending a movie I’ve never seen and never intend to watch. (Even if it’s not about a twerking dance competition, there’s nothing in that movie that sound remotely like “Bryce would like this.”) But let’s assume it really was a movie about a bunch of tweenagers twerking their hearts out. Definitely not okay, but worthy of a death threat?

Certainly not.

I can’t think of anything that *is* worthy of a death threat, honestly. And yet somehow people are lobbing them around with abandon. No idea how we can get that trend to stop, but I sure do wish it would. Going from “debate” to “death threats” in under 3 seconds isn’t going to do anyone any good.

What would your nominees be?

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.

Picking Out a Puppy

Back when we committed to getting a Golden Retriever, we knew we were getting one dog out of 18 spread over two litters. We knew it would be a male, and we knew we were 17th in line, so we weren’t expecting too much of a decision when it came time to get the actual puppy. What could be so hard about a simple thing like that?

Tuesday afternoon, we got The Call. We could drive over and pick out Ferris Drooler. Suddenly, the decision I’d passed off as easy weeks before seemed much thornier. As we headed over, I began to seriously wonder what, exactly, you look for when “choosing a dog.” After all, it’s not as if we’d chosen any of our children. You get what you’re given. And knowing how much can happen over the course of life, how much of a “good dog” is in the dog in particular, and how much is in how you raise him?

What can I say? It was a very existential drive. When we arrived, I still didn’t have any better idea how we would choose. Are you looking for color? Size? Temperament? “Something in their eyes”? A puppy that looks calm at the moment might only be calm because he was going crazy thirty minutes ago. It seemed like the worst case scenario for me: a decision that might really have long term effects, but which no amount of preparation could get me ready.

When we got there, the breeder made things even more complicated by letting us know there were four puppies we could choose from. “Just take them out back, put them on the ground, and see which one comes right for you,” she suggested. It seemed like great advice. So we took the four squirming bundles of energy to the back yard, I stood a bit of a ways off, and we Released the Hounds.

All four of them came right at me. So much for that advice.

(As a side note, can I say how glad I am that we’re not getting four puppies? Keeping track of all those guys was practically impossible, even with all five of us there. None of them really wanted to be held, and all of them wanted to go exploring in different directions. It was like the baby scene in Raising Arizona.)

Denisa and the kids were all drawn to a smaller, darker furred puppy. I couldn’t tell the difference between any of them (other than color), and so in the end, I made the easiest decision of them all: I let other people decide. We got the smaller one.

In all honesty, I don’t think it really mattered that much. I think we’d have been happy with any of them. If we’d have pulled up and been told, “This is your dog,” the end result would probably be the same.

But I’m very glad I don’t have to pick out a puppy again any time in the future. I can’t take that kind of pressure.

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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.